HISTORICAL NOTES: Quality

Back in 1896 when auburn-haired
Grace Graham Wilson bagged young Cornelius Vanderbilt, most of New
York's 400 agreed that it was a most unsuitable marriage. As a
great-grandson of the tough old Commodore who built the New York
Central, Cornelius Vanderbilt had some claims to aristocracy. Grace's
social assets were far more modest. Her father, Richard T. Wilson, was
a onetime Georgia farm boy whom well-bred New Yorkers regarded with
distaste because he had made his fortune himself and had started it by
speculating in cotton while more gentlemanly Southerners were off
fighting Yankees.